Forgotten places.

Went to bukit brown with my classmates today as part of a student-organised field trip. The place is pretty cool. Turns out bukit brown is both the largest and the most 'populated' Chinese graveyard outside of china; the place is 3 times the size of botanic gardens and has an estimated 100,000 tombs. A lot of these graves date back to even before Raffles even landed on Singapore, and it is the final resting place of many interesting people, including the 71st descendent of Confucius, Singapore's first western-medicine certified female doctor, Mr. Gan Eng Seng (the founder of Gan eng Seng secondary school) and the grandfather of the our most famous Singaporean to date, Lee Kuan Yew.

This isnt the grave of Confucius' great (x70) grandson, but its still cool. 

Up until pretty recently, most people just avoided the area since it would make a lot of horror-movie sense to stay away from massive graveyards, and was generally only frequented by the turf club, birders, ang mo joggers, and dog owners. However, after LTA announced in 2011 that they were going to put a road right through the middle of the cemetery, a lot of people took interest because all Singaporeans are kiasu and were afraid that they would miss out on something if they just bulldozed their way through it.

Of course, the horse-riders, birders, joggers and dog people had already known about how magnificent the place was. And thank goodness they raised a huge fuss about it. Bukit brown is a wonderful sanctuary for nature in addition to being an invaluable heritage site. While most of the roads are fairly well maintained, a lot of the cemetery has been taken over by pretty mature secondary forest, and as a result it looks radically different from the rest of the concrete jungle we call Singapore. 

Tomb with a view.

There are some pretty interesting insects here and a whole host of birds. I heard a woodpecker, saw a pair of nesting racquet tail drongos, and even caught a glimpse of a raptor of some sort. It wasn't even a good time for birding. My mum, dad and I may go back next tuesday at a better time to see what else may be hiding there, and I think I'll try to get some more insect photography done. 

Even though the verdict has already gone through that the road will still be built through bukit brown, I hope that we may still be able to pull a chek jawa and save the place. For all our talk about preserving heritage and being a garden city, we don't seem to really be walking the talk. I mean, bukit brown has recently just been cited as one of the World Monuments to Watch by the World Monuments fund, and it is the only place in Singapore to receive such an honour. And besides, wouldn't this be a more sensible place to generate tourism than Gardens By The Bay?

I guess in the end it will really boil down to a question of who cracks first. I personally feel that bukit brown is one of the few places in Singapore where you really can find adventure. Its wild, its chock-full of history, and most importantly, its different. Maybe its because I don't have my driving license yet, but I think I'd rather have this massive cemetery than a shorter commuting time. And besides, wouldn't the new downtown line take some pressure off the surrounding roads? So many questions, so little time. 

I read this pretty interesting article that children need to be feral to truly appreciate anything, so why not preserve places like these to set them loose in? There will of course be repercussions of losing the calming tranquillity bukit brown now has, but having a couple of screaming kids learning to keep quiet to see cool things will always be infinitely better than a constant stream of rumbling cars.  

To all my nature buff readers or friends seeking adventure, I highly recommend you swing by bukit brown to seek some solace or to sniff out some history. There are tours you can join for heritage and for nature, so why not go learn something new? It sure beats scrolling through facebook all day.

Next week I'm going for a walk along McRitchie as managed by the NUS Toddycats, so I think I'll try to churn out another photopost then. This old-fashioned bloggering sure is a lot more comprehensive than tweeting or facebooking photos, so what the hey, I'll see how far I can get with this.